Welcome to DC Part 3: Know Where You're From

This part of the program is called, "Know Where You're From." I was born at GW Hospital in Washington, DC. I went to elementary, middle and high school inside the city lines of Washington, DC. Both of my parents were born and raised here. I, ladies and gentlemen, am a pure-blood Washington Wizard. It hurts my heart when I encounter muggles who pretend to be what I am.

Now this isn't a diss to muggles. Some of my best friends are muggles. I love them and their malls with Snickerdoodles and carnivals in the parking lot, but I don't like when they show no self-pride. Be proud of who you are. Being a muggle means that you grew up in a suburban area like PG County or Montgomery County. It means that you had the option of taking a magic yellow chariot to school every morning while us Washingtonians walked through torrential rains, snow and brimstone.

Your roads are paved with the finest asphalt that STATE taxes can buy. You didn't have to grow up in the city that boasted the worst school system in the nation and simultaneously the highest murder rate. I did. We were labeled geniuses if we could say, "I got shooted." Meanwhile, you all knew that there was at least a state funded college waiting for you if you made it out of high school. The ONLY "in-state" school we have seemed to march down Connecticut Avenue every other week chanting "Save UDC" and begging for their accreditation back.

Half a million people don't commute into your city every single day. You can probably take off of work and go ride around your town with no problem. I'm lucky if I can find a parking spot that isn't a loading zone between 8 and 6 everyday or a rush hour zone between 4 and 7. On the weekends, when normal Americans are on leisure time, you don't have to chant the same mantra over and over again: "Don't hit the throngs of tourists standing in the middle of the street who feel that their life is incomplete if they can't get a picture of the giant stone stick coming out of the ground or the umpteenth statue of a person on a horse whose name they will never remember."

I understand why you do it. Notoriety helps. It's easier to paint a picture of where you live by just saying "I'm from DC" than specifying that you live an hour away (2 in traffic) in Centreville, VA. Maybe you reject your parents who seem bougie to you for working so hard to ensure you didn't have to grow up with a crackhead mayor, people fighting on the bus and girls getting shot in the head for not giving guys their numbers. I'm telling you, you have a good life there. Don't sell yourself short.

Besides I kinda earned those two red stripes on my flag.

[caption id="attachment_2213" align="alignnone" width="388"] The red represents the Mumbo Sauce. The white represents the chicken bones.[/caption]